Wednesday, 13 April 2016

The other day I was visiting a mining museum in Wales. The
lady showing us around was describing the poor working conditions in the early
1800s, 10 hours a day underground, plus a long walk to work and back. She then
said: “they worked like this six days a
week, then had to go to church on Sunday. It was a grim life.”

I immediately thought, “HAD to go to church?” What version
of history was this? She made it sound that early nineteenth century Britain
had full churches; full of people who really did not want to be there. The
truth was rather different.

Missing Church

In Medieval times people sometimes got fined if they missed
church, but given the services were in Latin, not much participation would have
been required. Generally the ruling was applied to the influential and wealthy,
with the poor noticeable by their absence. Such laws were dropped.

A law was brought back in 1559 making attendance at the now
Protestant national church compulsory. But this was done to counter the
remaining illegal Catholic services, rather than any desire to fill up
churches. Dropped in Commonwealth times it was restored in 1657, mainly to
stamp out nonconformity. but it failed to have much impact.

By the early 1700s the established church was in a desperate
state, run down buildings, poor attendance, clergy absent for weeks on end, and
many holding deist beliefs rather than the official doctrines of the church [1].
The non-conformists, though largely orthodox in belief, had withdrawn into a
shell after they had been legalised.

One Anglican, Bishop Butler, had noted:

It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted, by many
persons, that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry; but that it
is, now at length, discovered to be fictitious. And accordingly they treat it,
as if, in the present age, this were an agreed point among all people of
discernment; and nothing remained, but to set it up as a principal subject of
mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of reprisals, for its having so long
interrupted the pleasures of the world. [2]

Christianity was a laughing stock, church ignored, moral
behaviour owed little to Christian teaching, and the church leadership had lost
sight of the doctrines of salvation and mission. You had to be brave to go to
church in that climate. A bit like now really!

Revival

What changed this situation was a series of revivals from
1735 onwards. These first occurred amongst the Anglicans, who formed religious
societies, the Methodists as they were nicknamed. This gave steady growth in
church attendance to the end of the century, but nothing dramatic, see the
graphs in [3]. The Methodists left the established church, but they left a
changed and partly renewed church. The non-conformists also benefitted
considerably from this new movement.

However in the early 1800s, with more revivals across most
denominations, church attendance increased much faster than the population,
making church attendance a significant fraction of the population, and at last
a respectable pursuit. Church held
its ground until the twentieth century then, as most people know, started its
slow decline [3].

So in the period the lady at the mining museum was telling
us about, revival was common, but church attendance less so. There would have
been a number who did not go to church worship – they would have had Sunday
free. For those who did go, they went because they WANTED to, not because they
had to. They had been converted in revival, born of the Spirit, saved from
their sins. It was these convictions that drove them to church. Far from being
grim, it was a joy!

Rewriting History

What this lady was repeating was a piece of modern day
historical revision where past religious observance has been reinterpreted by a
secular age in non-spiritual terms. Of course she did not originate the
viewpoint but was merely repeating what is now the standard secular narrative.

Rewriting history is what always happens when a new ideology
takes hold in society and replaces the declining one. People’s identity is
partly determined by past events. With a new ideology the old past becomes an
embarrassment and must be revised to support the new identity, and ridicule the
old one.

That is the situation for Christianity in the West. However
many people still believe it as a faith, it is yesterday’s ideology as far as
wider society is concerned. The void it has left in society is ripe for a new
ideology, in this case one that is atheistic, man-centred and secular. The
unbeliever cannot understand spiritual things, such as revival, conversion and
the work of the Holy Spirit; such things are foolishness to them:

But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit
of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are
spiritually discerned. 1 Corinthians 2:14.

So neither can we expect society, with its new ideology, to
understand church history. So no blame on the lady at the mining museum, she is
a product of our current culture.

What is this new ideology? How can its competition with the
church for the heart of society be modelled? Is the church, as currently formed,
up for the challenge? That is another blog, or two.